explore | Grilled Cheese

@asls.org.uk Sep 28, 2026, 6:48 PM

“What truly disturbs in ‘Olalla’ is not the heroine […] It is the profoundly vampiric bond she forms with the hero – & the doubts it raises about his own precarious sanity”

—“Olalla”: Robert Louis Stevenson’s artful & ambiguous vampire novella
#C19 #gothic
www.thebottleimp.org.uk/2012/11/temp...

@fiwek-uty.social.y-gallery.net.ap.brid.gy Sep 26, 2026, 2:33 PM

Zacytujmy klasyka: "Maseczki nie pomagają." Tak, a wręcz szkodzą! I to jak! To powolna droga do grobu. ZAPAMIĘTAĆ! #c19

@asls.org.uk Sep 26, 2026, 12:53 PM

“I should here explain, that the witches, when they take the shape of hares, charm away the power of pouther and lead; so that unless the gun be loaded with silver, it will not go off, or, if it does go off, it will not kill…”

—John Galt, THE STEAM-BOAT (1821)
#BookWormSat #C19

"Your Majesty has belike heard that there are certain mystical women in the world called witches. In the shire of Renfrew, we have had, both in time past and at present, no small trouble with their pranks, and it is as thoroughly believed among the country folk as the gospel, that the witches are in the practice of gallanting over field and flood after sun-set, in the shape of cats and mawkins, to dance the La Volta, with a certain potentate that I shall not offend your Majesty by naming.
"I should here explain, that the witches, when they take the shape of hares, charm away the power of pouther and lead; so that unless the gun be loaded with silver, it will not go off, or, if it does go off, it will not kill, especially in the hands of a young sportsman; and that the best antidote to their charm, is for the sportsman, when he is an experienced hand, to put a pair of silver sleeve-buttons in his fowling-piece. When he does this, and fires with effect, it is said, and the fact is often well attested, the hare will never be seen again; […]

[…] but beyond the next hedge, some dubious carlin will, in all human probability, be found riddled in the hips, saying her prayers backwards. What I have to tell is an undoubted proof of this, for it happened to myself in the presence of the late Logan of that ilk, a man of singular piety, and one of the best shots in the shire of Ayr.
"Being staying with him, we one day went out to shoot. It was in the afternoon. We started nothing, and we staid late, not very content, as your Majesty may well think, with such profitless sport. But I trow we have both had cause to remember long that afternoon; for in the gloaming, as we were coursing with our dejected dogs, the which were as disappointed as ourselves, we start-ed, as we thought, a hare out of a whin bush. It ran before us, in every gesture, lith, and limb, just like a hare, and the dogs pursued it as if it had been nothing less natural. We followed, never doubting that it was a hare.
"A fine har'st evening had set in, and the new moon, the sickle of Time, betokened, in the west. ern heavens, that Nature was binding up the sheaves of our days; but, nevertheless, we followed our game, never suspecting that it was any […]

@musiqo.mstdn.social.ap.brid.gy Sep 25, 2026, 10:33 PM

🇦🇺 Nie zapominajmy, że australijska policja, w swoim szaleństwie, sprawdzała kubki z kawą, aby upewnić się, że ludzie mają uzasadnienie, by zdejmować maski podczas picia kawy w czasie #c19 . To była absurdalna sytuacja.

@asls.org.uk Sep 25, 2026, 1:32 PM

While he was yet a student, there came to him a dream-adventure which he has no anxiety to repeat; he began, that is to say, to dream in sequence and thus to lead a double life…

—Robert Louis Stevenson’s “A Chapter on Dreams”, via @gutenberg.org
#C19 #WorldDreamDay
www.gutenberg.org/files/30990/...

Well, in his dream-life he passed a long day in the surgical theatre, his heart in his mouth, his teeth on edge, seeing monstrous malformations and the abhorred dexterity of surgeons. In a heavy, rainy, foggy evening he came forth into the South Bridge, turned up the High Street, and entered the door of a tall land, at the top of which he supposed himself to lodge. All night long, in his wet clothes, he climbed the stairs, stair after stair in endless series, and at every second flight a flaring lamp with a reflector. All night long he brushed by single persons passing downward—beggarly women of the street, great, weary, muddy labourers, poor scarecrows of men, pale parodies of women—but all drowsy and weary like himself, and all single, and all brushing against him as they passed. In the end, out of a northern window, he would see day beginning to whiten over the Firth, give up the ascent, turn to descend, and in a breath be back again upon the streets, in his wet clothes …

@asls.org.uk Sep 25, 2026, 1:32 PM

“Stevenson relates examples of vivid dreams at length, as illustrations of this detailed, indigenous creation of narrative material, but also as a pathology which leads to the reification of such dream residuum in the Strange Case of Dr Jekyll & Mr Hyde…”
#C19
www.thebottleimp.org.uk/2018/07/that...

@asls.org.uk Sep 25, 2026, 1:32 PM

From breakfast on through all the day
At home among my friends I stay,
But every night I go abroad
Afar into the land of Nod…

—Robert Louis Stevenson, “The Land of Nod”
from A CHILD’S GARDEN OF VERSES (1885)

Today, 25 Sept, is #WorldDreamDay
#C19 #poem #poetry #dreams #kidlit #Booksky 💙📚

The Land of Nod
by Robert Louis Stevenson

From breakfast on through all the day
At home among my friends I stay,
But every night I go abroad
Afar into the land of Nod.

All by myself I have to go,
With none to tell me what to do —
All alone beside the streams
And up the mountain-sides of dreams.

The strangest things are there for me,
Both things to eat and things to see,
And many frightening sights abroad
Till morning in the land of Nod.

Try as I like to find the way,
I never can get back by day,
Nor can remember plain and clear
The curious music that I hear.

Pen and ink illustration by Charles Robinson (1870–1937) to Stevenson’s poem "The Land of Nod". The image is tall and thin; the right side is dominated by a black crag (or possibly a strange tree-trunk), in front of which, in the bottom right-hand corner, stand two fantastical bird-like creatures with scruffy feathers and outsized, beaked heads. Although not overtly threatening or frightening, they are unsettling in their appearance. Behind them, a small child, head bowed, toils up-slope with the aid of a staff. Strange, twisted outcrops and buildings are in the background, and in the distance another child can be seen floating serenely on a cloud. In the top left-hand corner, a giant, long-nosed face peers over the top of the cliff.

Caption: "Up the mountain sides of dreams"

@asls.org.uk Sep 24, 2026, 12:41 PM

Blows the wind to-day, and the sun and the rain are flying,
Blows the wind on the moors to-day and now,
Where about the graves of the martyrs the whaups are crying,
My heart remembers how!

—Robert Louis Stevenson, “To S. R. Crockett (In Reply to a Dedication)”
#poem #poetry #C19

Robert Louis Stevenson
To S. R. Crockett
(In Reply to a Dedication)

Blows the wind to-day, and the sun and the rain are flying,
Blows the wind on the moors to-day and now,
Where about the graves of the martyrs the whaups are crying,
My heart remembers how!

Gray recumbent tombs of the dead in desert places,
Standing stones on the vacant wine-red moor,
Hills of sheep, and the howes of the silent vanished races,
And winds, austere and pure:

Be it granted me to behold you again in dying,
Hills of home! and to hear again the call;
Hear about the graves of the martyrs the peewees crying,
And hear no more at all.

@asls.org.uk Sep 24, 2026, 12:41 PM

THE RAIDERS
Currently on BBC Sounds

SR Crockett’s THE RAIDERS (1894), “Scotland’s forgotten bestseller”, is a classic of Scottish literature – full of kidnap, love & breathless adventure, set in the wild Galloway landscape. Adapted by Clara Glynn
#C19 #Booksky 💙📚
www.bbc.co.uk/sounds/play/...

@asls.org.uk Sep 24, 2026, 12:41 PM

SR Crockett (1859–1914) was born #OTD, 24 Sep. A bestselling author of 60+ novels, he fell from fashion, his books dismissed as “kailyard”. But Tolkien cites Crockett as an inspiration, & in VIDA, or THE IRON LORD (1907) he possibly wrote the first car chase in fiction
#C19 💙📚
1890s.ca/crockett_bio/

Samuel Rutherford Crockett. Photograph by Elliott & Fry. The Critic, September 1905. P. 200. Wikimedia Commons. Crockett is bearded, and wears a jacket buttoned all the way up to his neck. His left hand rests in his jacket pocket and he is holding a book, casually, in his right. The photograph is in black and white.

@asls.org.uk Sep 21, 2026, 1:23 PM

“Scott’s death at Abbotsford, 21st September 1832”
Sir William Allan (1782–1850), watercolour on paper
Scottish National Portrait Gallery
#romanticism #C19
www.nationalgalleries.org/art-and-arti...

Watercolour sketch of the interior of Walter Scott’s bedroom at Abbotsford. The room is in a gothic-medieval style, but is quite light and airy. A dark, unlit fireplace is on the right-hand edge. Further back, on the left, is Scott’s four-poster bed, draped in white. Scott’s body can be seen through a gauzy curtain, illuminated by a single sunbeam.

Above the image, text reads: The Original Signed Coloured Drawing by Sir William Allan, P.R.S.A., sketched on the spot, and dated Abbotsford 1832. From which the Engraving in Lockharts Life was taken.

Below the image, text reads: Death of Sir Walter Scott, Bart, on Friday the 21st September, 1832

The Dining Room at Abbotsford
(See in this Collection Willie Laidlaw's Note of the "Death About an Hour Ago")

"It was a beautiful day – so warm, that every window was wide open – and so perfectly still, that the sound of all others most delicious to his ear, the gentle ripple of the Tweed over its pebbles was distinctly visible."
Lockharts Life of Scott

His Biographer relates that Sir William Allan was invited by him to Abbotsford, "To have some images preserved of the interior Apartments as occupied by the Founder"

@asls.org.uk Sep 21, 2026, 1:23 PM

Call it not vain:—they do not err,
Who say, that when the Poet dies,
Mute Nature mourns her worshipper,
And celebrates his obsequies…

—from Canto V, “The Lay of the Last Minstrel” by Sir Walter Scott (1771–1832) – died #OTD, 21 September
#romanticism #C19 #poem
www.theotherpages.org/poems/canto0...

Sir Walter Scott
The Lay of the Last Minstrel
Canto V

I.
Call it not vain;—they do not err,
Who say, that when the Poet dies,
Mute Nature mourns her worshipper,
And celebrates his obsequies:
Who say, tall cliff and cavern lone
For the departed Bard make moan;
That mountains weep in crystal rill;
That flowers in tears of balm distill;
Through his lov'd groves that breezes sigh,
And oaks, in deeper groan, reply;
And rivers teach their rushing wave
To murmur dirges round his grave

II.
Not that, in sooth, o'er mortal urn
Those things inanimate can mourn;
But that the stream, the wood, the gale
Is vocal with the plaintive wail
Of those, who, else forgotten long,
Liv'd in the poet's faithful song,
And with the poet's parting breath,
Whose memory feels a second death.
The Maid's pale shade, who wails her lot,
That love, true love, should be forgot,
From rose and hawthorn shakes the tear
Upon the gentle Minstrel's bier:
The phantom Knight, his glory fled,
Mourns o'er the field he heap'd with dead;
Mounts the wild blast that sweeps amain,
And shrieks along the battle-plain.
The Chief, whose antique crownlet long
Still sparkled in the feudal song,
Now, from the mountain's misty throne,
Sees, in the thanedom once his own,
His ashes undistinguish'd lie,
His place, his power, his memory die:
His groans the lonely caverns fill,
His tears of rage impel the rill:
All mourn the Minstrel's harp unstrung,
Their name unknown, their praise unsung.

@norwayskandinavien.bsky.social Sep 17, 2026, 1:28 PM

#Corona #Luftreiniger #Covid #C19 #SARSCoV2 #CovidIsNotOver #covidisairborne #CleanAir #CoronaVirus #TragtMaske #RSV #H5N1 #GrippeViren #Norwegen #IgnoringCovidIsDeadly

Auch im #Urlaub habe ich meine #Maske 😷, #Luftreiniger und #Desinfektionsmittel mit dabei💪

Bitte #TragtMaske auch im Urlaub 😷💪

Luftreiniger, Maske und Desinfektionsmittel, dahinter ein Fenster mit Ausblick auf die Berge mit Fjord.

Ein Luftreiniger steht im Wohnzimmer in der Ecke.

@asls.org.uk Sep 17, 2026, 12:38 PM

“John Bull is ignorant of the States; he is probably ignorant of India; but, considering his opportunities, he is far more ignorant of countries nearer his own door…”

—Robert Louis Stevenson, “The Foreigner at Home”
MEMORIES & PORTRAITS (1887) via @gutenberg.org
#C19
www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/381

It is so, perhaps, in all countries; perhaps in all, men are most ignorant of the foreigners at home. John Bull is ignorant of the States; he is probably ignorant of India, but, considering his opportunities, he is far more ignorant of countries nearer his own door. There is one country, for instance—its frontier not so far from London, its people closely akin, its language the same in all essentials with the English—of which I will go bail he knows nothing. His ignorance of the sister kingdom cannot be described; it can only be illustrated by anecdote. I once travelled with a man of plausible manners and good intelligence—a University man, as the phrase goes—a man, besides, who had taken his degree in life and knew a thing or two about the age we live in. We were deep in talk, whirling between Peterborough and London; among other things, he began to describe some piece of legal injustice he had recently encountered, and I observed in my innocence that things were not so in Scotland. “I beg your pardon,” said he, “this is a matter of law.” He had never heard of the Scots law; nor did he choose to be informed. The law was the same for the whole country, he told me roundly; every child knew that. At last, to settle matters, I explained to him that I was a member of a Scottish legal body, and had stood the brunt of an examination in the very law in question. Thereupon he looked me for a moment full in the face and dropped the conversation. This is a monstrous instance, if you like, but it does not stand alone in the experience of Scots.

@c19podcast.bsky.social Sep 17, 2026, 12:29 AM

Our September episode is out! Follow host Andrew Thibaudeau into the world of mesmerism by way of a years-long (often humorous) exchange between a man named Luther Stubbins and editor of the Boston Investigator. Listen wherever you get your podcasts! buff.ly/OkMJi0C

#c19 #mesmerism #pseudoscience

@asls.org.uk Sep 16, 2026, 4:45 PM

I’ll sing a song of Glasgow town,
That stands on either side
The river that was once so fair,
The much insulted Clyde…

—Marion Bernstein, “A Song of Glasgow Town”
from A SONG OF GLASGOW TOWN: The collected poems of Marion Bernstein (ASL, 2013)
#C19 #poem #poetry
asls.org.uk/publications...

A Song of Glasgow Town
Marion Bernstein

I’ll sing a song of Glasgow town,
That stands on either side
The river that was once so fair,
The much insulted Clyde.
That stream, once pure, but now so foul,
Was never made to be
A sewer, just to bear away
The refuse to the sea.
Oh, when will Glasgow’s factories
Cease to pollute its tide,
And let the Glasgow people see
The beauty of the Clyde!

I’ll sing a song of Glasgow town:
On every side I see
A crowd of giant chimney stalks
As grim as grim can be.
There’s always smoke from some of them—
Some black, some brown, some grey.
Yet genius has invented means
To burn the smoke away.
Oh, when will Glasgow factories
Cease to pollute the air;
To spread dull clouds o’er sunny skies
That should be bright and fair!

I’ll sing a song of Glasgow town,
Where wealth and want abound;
Where the high seat of learning dwells
’Mid ignorance profound.
Oh, when will Glasgow make a rule
To do just what she ought—
Let starving bairns in every school
Be fed as well as taught!
And when will Glasgow city be
Fair Caledonia’s pride,
And boast her clear unclouded skies,
And crystal-flowing Clyde?

@asls.org.uk Sep 16, 2026, 4:45 PM

“Published mainly in the Glasgow Weekly Mail and Glasgow Weekly Herald, her poems could reach an audience in excess of 200,000 readers… yet Marion Bernstein has a good claim to being the greatest Scottish feminist we’ve never heard of”
#C19 #womenwriters
www.scottishreviewofbooks.org/2013/11/glas...

@asls.org.uk Sep 16, 2026, 4:45 PM

Wanted a husband who doesn’t suppose,
That all earthly employments one feminine knows—
That she’ll scrub, do the cleaning, and cooking, and baking,
And plain needlework, hats and caps, and dressmaking…

—“Wanted A Husband”, by Marion Bernstein (1846–1906), born #OTD, 16 Sept
🎂🧵
#C19 #poem #poetry

Wanted a Husband
Marion Bernstein

‘Baking and cooking, scrubbing and dressing
Accomplishments grand, well worth possessing;
Economy too, with wisdom discreet,
My wife must practise to make all ends meet.’
—Eleve.

Wanted a husband who doesn’t suppose,
That all earthly employments one feminine knows—
That she’ll scrub, do the cleaning, and cooking, and baking,
And plain needlework, hats and caps, and dressmaking.
Do the family washing, yet always look neat,
Mind the bairns, with a temper unchangeably sweet,
Be a cheerful companion, whenever desired,
And contentedly toil day and night, if required.
Men expecting as much, one may easily see,
But they’re not what is wanted, at least, not by me.

Wanted a husband who’s tender and true,
Who will stick to his duty, and never get ‘fou,’
But when all his day’s work he has blithely gone through,
Help his wife, ‘set to rights,’ till her work is done too;
Who will not absurdly, and helplessly go,
And trouble the wife about ‘buttons to sew,’
On his shirt, or his gloves, or his coat, or his vest,
But will sew them himself, and not think he’s oppressed.
Now, if such a lad you should happen to see,
He’s wanted by many, but yet—not by me!

@asls.org.uk Sep 16, 2026, 1:06 PM

At once both achingly sad & unsentimental, “A Hegira” is included in THIRTEEN STORIES by R.B. Cunninghame Graham, which can be downloaded as a free ebook from @gutenberg.org
#Booksky 💙📚 #C19
www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/48510

@asls.org.uk Sep 16, 2026, 1:06 PM

“Six warriors, a woman and a boy, captured close to Chihuahua, and sent to Mexico, the Lord knows why…”

—Robert Bontine Cunninghame Graham’s 1899 short story “A Hegira” follows a group of Mescalero Apaches & their desperate flight from Mexico City to their own lands
#WyrdWednesday #C19

The giant cypresses, tall even in the time of Montezuma, the castle of Chapultepec upon its rock (an island in the plain of Mexico), the panorama of the great city backed by the mountain range; the two volcanoes, the Popocatepetl and the Istacihuatl, and the lakes; the tigers in their cages, did not interest me so much as a small courtyard, in which, ironed and guarded, a band of Indians of the Apache tribe were kept confined. Six warriors, a woman and a boy, captured close to Chihuahua, and sent to Mexico, the Lord knows why; for generally an Apache captured was shot at once, following the frontier rule, which without difference of race was held on both sides of the Rio Grande, that a good Indian must needs be dead.

Silent and stoical the warriors sat, not speaking once in a whole day, communicating but by signs; naked except the breech-clout; their eyes apparently opaque, and looking at you without sight, but seeing everything; and their demeanour less reassuring than that of the tigers in the cage hard by. All could speak Spanish if they liked, some a word or two of English, but no one heard them […]

@asls.org.uk Sep 28, 2026, 6:48 PM

“What truly disturbs in ‘Olalla’ is not the heroine […] It is the profoundly vampiric bond she forms with the hero – & the doubts it raises about his own precarious sanity”

—“Olalla”: Robert Louis Stevenson’s artful & ambiguous vampire novella
#C19 #gothic
www.thebottleimp.org.uk/2012/11/temp...

@fiwek-uty.social.y-gallery.net.ap.brid.gy Sep 26, 2026, 2:33 PM

Zacytujmy klasyka: "Maseczki nie pomagają." Tak, a wręcz szkodzą! I to jak! To powolna droga do grobu. ZAPAMIĘTAĆ! #c19

@asls.org.uk Sep 26, 2026, 12:53 PM

—John Galt, THE STEAM-BOAT (1821)
#BookWormSat #C19

@musiqo.mstdn.social.ap.brid.gy Sep 25, 2026, 10:33 PM

@asls.org.uk Sep 25, 2026, 1:32 PM

While he was yet a student, there came to him a dream-adventure which he has no anxiety to repeat; he began, that is to say, to dream in sequence and thus to lead a double life…

—Robert Louis Stevenson’s “A Chapter on Dreams”, via @gutenberg.org
#C19 #WorldDreamDay
www.gutenberg.org/files/30990/...

@asls.org.uk Sep 25, 2026, 1:32 PM

From breakfast on through all the day
At home among my friends I stay,
But every night I go abroad
Afar into the land of Nod…

—Robert Louis Stevenson, “The Land of Nod”
from A CHILD’S GARDEN OF VERSES (1885)

Today, 25 Sept, is #WorldDreamDay
#C19 #poem #poetry #dreams #kidlit #Booksky 💙📚

@asls.org.uk Sep 24, 2026, 12:41 PM

Blows the wind to-day, and the sun and the rain are flying,
Blows the wind on the moors to-day and now,
Where about the graves of the martyrs the whaups are crying,
My heart remembers how!

—Robert Louis Stevenson, “To S. R. Crockett (In Reply to a Dedication)”
#poem #poetry #C19

@asls.org.uk Sep 24, 2026, 12:41 PM

THE RAIDERS
Currently on BBC Sounds

@asls.org.uk Sep 24, 2026, 12:41 PM

@asls.org.uk Sep 21, 2026, 1:23 PM

Call it not vain:—they do not err,
Who say, that when the Poet dies,
Mute Nature mourns her worshipper,
And celebrates his obsequies…

—from Canto V, “The Lay of the Last Minstrel” by Sir Walter Scott (1771–1832) – died #OTD, 21 September
#romanticism #C19 #poem
www.theotherpages.org/poems/canto0...

@norwayskandinavien.bsky.social Sep 17, 2026, 1:28 PM

#Corona #Luftreiniger #Covid #C19 #SARSCoV2 #CovidIsNotOver #covidisairborne #CleanAir #CoronaVirus #TragtMaske #RSV #H5N1 #GrippeViren #Norwegen #IgnoringCovidIsDeadly

Auch im #Urlaub habe ich meine #Maske 😷, #Luftreiniger und #Desinfektionsmittel mit dabei💪

Bitte #TragtMaske auch im Urlaub 😷💪

@asls.org.uk Sep 17, 2026, 12:38 PM

“John Bull is ignorant of the States; he is probably ignorant of India; but, considering his opportunities, he is far more ignorant of countries nearer his own door…”

—Robert Louis Stevenson, “The Foreigner at Home”
MEMORIES & PORTRAITS (1887) via @gutenberg.org
#C19
www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/381

@c19podcast.bsky.social Sep 17, 2026, 12:29 AM

#c19 #mesmerism #pseudoscience

@asls.org.uk Sep 16, 2026, 4:45 PM

I’ll sing a song of Glasgow town,
That stands on either side
The river that was once so fair,
The much insulted Clyde…

—Marion Bernstein, “A Song of Glasgow Town”
from A SONG OF GLASGOW TOWN: The collected poems of Marion Bernstein (ASL, 2013)
#C19 #poem #poetry
asls.org.uk/publications...

@asls.org.uk Sep 16, 2026, 4:45 PM

—“Wanted A Husband”, by Marion Bernstein (1846–1906), born #OTD, 16 Sept
🎂🧵
#C19 #poem #poetry

@asls.org.uk Sep 16, 2026, 1:06 PM

“Six warriors, a woman and a boy, captured close to Chihuahua, and sent to Mexico, the Lord knows why…”

—Robert Bontine Cunninghame Graham’s 1899 short story “A Hegira” follows a group of Mescalero Apaches & their desperate flight from Mexico City to their own lands
#WyrdWednesday #C19